Nearly a year after that, I remember, it was very cold, and the little southern boy felt it especially.  He had grown ever so tall and thin, but not strong, and he went about looking blue and shivery.  How I came to be still at the Park I will tell you in another place, but there I was, and my friend Gus won my pity by his wretched looks.  I used to look at his blue hands, and wonder what could be done.  At last I remembered a pair of warm knitted gloves, that had been given me, which I never wore.  They had no fingers, only a thumb, and I doubted whether Gus would wear them; but I made up my mind that he would be glad anyhow to keep his chilblains from the wind.

I don’t think I shall ever forget his look when I presented them to him, holding them by the pretty blue wool which fastened them together.  That his “petite mademoiselle” should think of him, and make him a present, too! and then that that present should be one that he could not anyhow use!  It was fairly too much for him; he looked at them, he looked at me, turned furiously red, stammered, stuttered, turned round, and literally ran away!

I never tried to make him a second present.

IV.

MY HOME, AND WHAT IT WAS LIKE.

Now, do you know, I feel rather ashamed of myself that I have not all this while told you in the least who I was, or where I came from.  I began in the middle by saying, “I want to go home,” but never told you in the least where my home was, nor what it was.

Well, to tell you the truth, I did not know much about my family history in those early days.  I knew that my name was Mary Emily Marshall, commonly called Sissy, and I knew that my papa was “the gentleman that makes all the sick people well,”—­“or tries to,” Jane would add.  I never did.  Of course, if my papa tried to do anything he did it.  That was my doctrine.  We lived quite down in the country among the poor people, and we were not rich ourselves.  Mamma had been born in this beautiful park, and I know now, though I did not then, that it was a great trouble at the Park when she married the country doctor, who loved the poor people so much that he would not leave them to grow rich and honoured as a London physician.  But there was no grandpapa left now to be angry; and grandmamma, though we had never seen her, we had always loved for the beautiful presents she sent us.

There were only three of us at this time—­my little self; Bobbie, a boy of four years old, boasting of the fattest, rosiest cheeks in the world; and wee Willie, the white-faced, fretful baby of six months.  Oh, how well I remember the old house, with its great lamp hanging out over the lonely road, and shining among the trees, to show the villagers the way up to their good, kind friend the doctor.  Many were the blessings we little ones used to get as we passed down the village street, and we owed them all to our father’s goodness.